Mary Gordon (writer)

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This article is about the American writer. For the British novelist Mary Charlotte Julia Gordon, see Mrs. Disney Leith.

Mary Gordon
Far Rockaway, New York, U.S.
OccupationWriter
NationalityAmerican
EducationBarnard College (BA)
Syracuse University (MA)
Notable worksThe Company of Women
SpouseArthur H. Cash

Mary Catherine Gordon (born December 8, 1949) is an American writer from Queens and Valley Stream, New York. She is the McIntosh Professor of English at Barnard College. She is best known for her novels, memoirs and literary criticism. In 2008, she was named Official State Author of New York.

Early life and education

Mary Gordon was born in

Vilna, Lithuania.[4] After his conversion, her father published some anti-Semitic and right-wing journalism. Gordon's search and attempt to reconcile her discoveries with the memory of her father became the basis of her memoir, The Shadow Man: A Daughter's Search for Her Father (1996).[4]

After being widowed, her mother Anna and Mary moved to live with her maternal grandmother, who was Irish Catholic, in Valley Stream, near Queens.[1] Her mother worked as a secretary to support them. Gordon had a very Catholic childhood. She attended Holy Name of Mary School in Valley Stream and The Mary Louis Academy for high school in Jamaica, New York.[5]

Although her mother and her family wanted Gordon to go to a Catholic college, Gordon was awarded a scholarship to Barnard College, and she received her A.B. in 1971. She pursued graduate work, completing an M.A. at Syracuse University in 1973.

Career

Gordon lived in

Arthur Cash, a professor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He was a Pulitzer Prize
finalist (2007) and was Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the time of his death in 2016. They have two adult children, Anna and David.

Gordon currently resides in New York City, where she is McIntosh Professor of English at Barnard College, and in Hope Valley, Rhode Island. Novelist Galaxy Craze has said of Gordon as a teacher at Barnard, "She loves to read; she would read us passages in class and start crying, she's so moved by really good writing. And she was the only good writing teacher at Barnard, so I just kept taking her class over and over. She taught me so much."[6]

Gordon published her first novel, Final Payments, in 1978. In 1981, she wrote the foreword to the Harvest edition of Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own."

In 1984, she was one of 97 theologians and religious persons who signed A Catholic Statement on Pluralism and Abortion, calling for religious pluralism and discussion within the Catholic Church regarding the Church's position on abortion.[7]

Literary works

Novels

  • Final Payments (1978)
    ISBN 0-394-42793-9
  • ISBN 0-394-50508-5
  • Men and Angels (1985)
    ISBN 0-394-52403-9
  • The Other Side (1989)
    ISBN 0-670-82566-2
  • Spending (1998)
    ISBN 0-684-85204-7
  • Pearl (2005)
    ISBN 0-375-42315-X
  • The Love of My Youth (2011)
    ISBN 0-307-37742-3
  • There Your Heart Lies (2017)
    ISBN 0-307-90794-5
  • Payback (2020)
    ISBN 1-524-74922-2

Novellas and short story collections

Non-fiction

Prizes and awards

In 1993, Gordon received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

New York Writers Hall of Fame
.

References

  1. ^ a b c Don Lee, "About Mary Gordon: A Profile", Ploughshares, Issue 73 |Fall 1997; accessed 14 Aug 2018
  2. ^ Chan, Sewell (March 3, 2008). "Official State Author and Poet Are Named". Retrieved September 24, 2016.
  3. ^ "Biography | Mary Gordon". www.marygordon.net. Archived from the original on September 24, 2016. Retrieved September 24, 2016.
  4. ^ a b William H. Pritchard, "The Cave of Memory", The New York Times, 26 May 1996; accessed 10 Aug 2018
  5. ^ "Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason . Bill Moyers and Mary Gordon and Colin McGinn. June 30, 2006". www.pbs.org. PBS. Retrieved September 24, 2016.
  6. ^ "The BEATRICE Interview: 1999". www.beatrice.com. Retrieved September 24, 2016.
  7. ISBN 0-253-34688-6
    .
  8. ^ Gordon, Mary (November 9, 2009). "Prodigal Son < Killing the Buddha". Killing the Buddha. Retrieved September 24, 2016.
  9. ^ "Mary Gordon". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
  10. ^ "Mary Gordon Author Bookshelf". Random House.
  11. ^ Morias, Betsy (March 4, 2008). "Barnard Prof Named New York State Author". Columbia Daily Spectator. Retrieved September 24, 2016.

External links

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